A cylindrical roll of roll paper is formed into a cylindrical shape in its side surface by winding toilet paper or towel paper on a hollow cylindrical core, so that the roll of roll paper can be continuously and smoothly taken out of a holder in use.
However, the cylindrical shape and the hollow cylindrical core lead to increased voids in the loading, storage and the like rolls of roll paper, thusresulting in bulkiness. Due to these voids caused by the shape of rolls, with the rolls of the conventional roll paper, freight charges, warehouse charges and the like are rather high, which charges are not neglibible in view of of a unit cost of a roll of roll paper. Moreover, in the case of export to the overseas and the like, the freight charges and warehouse charges are increased to a huge amount, and the reduction of these charges has been a great concern in the industry.
To obviate the drawback caused by the cylindrical shape of roll paper as described above, there have been proposed measures for deforming a roll of roll paper into a flat shape to decrease costs required for packing, transporting and storing of rolls of roll paper.
However, none of these measures has been put into practice.
The reason is that, as for roll paper, if it is deformed into crooked shape during transportation for example, its value as an article of trade is deemed to be lowered. When a roll of roll paper is compression deformed into a flat shape, the roll of roll paper is bulged out in one direction and crapes formed thereon are flattened, and folding wrinkles are left to lower elasticity of the roll of roll paper. Although the flattened roll of roll paper is restored to be a round shape for use, the crooked shape of the roll of roll paper cannot be easily obviated and is left as it is. Also when a roll of roll paper is pressed and compression deformed into a flat shape, the roll of roll paper tends to inflate again due to its inherent elasticity when the pressing force is removed. Thus, it is not easy to maintain the shape of the roll of roll paper at the time of being compression deformed due to the pressing, and consequently, the effect of reducing the volume due to the compression deformation is not so much as expected.